December Partner Spotlight featuring Hewlett-Packard Japan

Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd., (HP Japan) is strengthening its partnership with Citrix to provide the information infrastructure required to support the mobile revolution in workstyles that has swept the world over the last several years.

“HP is currently working on four themes – cloud, big data, security and mobility – with the aim of realizing a new style of IT,” said Network & Mobility Portfolio Lead Mr. Keigo Omura. “The mobility theme not only refers to the mobilization of IT systems within a company, but can actually be considered a tidal wave that includes changes to the work methods of employees, as well as to their lifestyles. The solutions we are proposing in response to these changes feature Citrix products for VDI, as well as Citrix XenMobile and Citrix ShareFile.”

HP operates various business units related to enterprise IT.

Among them are three that deal with Citrix products and fall under the Technology Consulting Division. Mr. Omura explained the breakdown: “First is the Systems Integrator Department, which I lead. This unit primarily supports our clients’ mobility solutions featuring XenMobile, ShareFile and Citrix XenDesktop. Second is the Hardware Department, which provides a new desktop environment that we call a Hosted Desktop Infrastructure (HDI) with our Moonshot System, in addition to our original product, IA Server. No other companies are providing solutions like HDI. Third is the Client Device Department, which mainly handles thin clients and works with Citrix globally.”

The mobilization of corporate IT requires not only the introduction of mobile devices and the replacement of communication tools, but also a variety of solutions for rebuilding corporate network environments and strengthening security measures. These solutions call for a wealth of knowledge and technical skills. Catering to clients’ advanced system integration needs, the Technology Consulting Division is promoting the mobilization of corporate IT with Citrix products serving as the focal point of these efforts.

“The field of cloud storage, which includes ShareFile falls, is typical of IT areas currently undergoing consumerization. Agility is considered the most important attribute of cloud storage, and HP is currently planning to package ShareFile to respond to this requirement. Customers using the service on a trial basis are defining implementation requirements based on corporate IT needs such as single sign-on, integration with existing file servers and management of mobile devices. HP is looking for support from its customers in making adjustments to the service and examining a plan for deployment,” explained Mr. Omura.

The Hardware Department is offering HDI through the HP Moonshot System.

HDI is a new hardware-only remote desktop solution that provides an alternative to virtualization. In addition to the operating system and the processor, HDI can use physical resources and as each user can occupy and use these, there are no concerns about performance. As the graphical processing unit (GPU) and SSD can also be occupied, Moonshot also fully supports advanced graphics processing and disk I/O needs. Power users operating XenDesktop can also take full advantage of this. In addition, implementing a VDI solution requires a serious amount of back-end infrastructure, including servers and storage, and can be very complex, Molina said.

One of the biggest issues is the “VDI boot storm,” which is the huge strain on server resources when multiple users turn their virtual desktops on at the same time, he said.

“All that booting up, scanning, antivirus and other functions is a big strain on the system,” he said. “We believe Moonshot will handle it. With the Converged System 100 for Hosted Desktops, each hosted desktop has its own server node. HP is providing 180 hosted desktops in 4.3 U. That’s saving expensive data center space and power, and cutting the need for expensive external storage.”

To enhance HDI, HP Japan formed robust partnerships with AMD, Intel and Citrix, and has developed a XenDesktop reference architecture called HP ConvergedSystem 100 for HDI, an all-in-one compute, storage and networking system featuring XenDesktop that delivers a better experience for knowledge workers. Thanks to an independent compute and graphics-processing unit for each user, the high-density HP ConvergedSystem 100 for Hosted Desktops delivers a full-functional PC desktop experience to each user. Workers enjoy consistent, reliable performance and high quality of service, no matter what individual workloads are running—including business graphics and multimedia applications*. Customers can advance quickly with HP ConvergedSystem 100 for HDI by following a Japanese language startup guide. The guide provides configuration recommendations, verified by Citrix, which avoid the need for pre-configuration and validation studies of the hardware.

“In round-table meetings with many customers, we have heard about the challenges of internally organizing the mobilization of corporate IT. We plan to continue listening closely to customers and provide solutions to their most difficult problems, primarily focused on HP and Citrix products,” concluded Mr. Omura, speaking of the future.

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ShareFile is designed to seamlessly integrate with a company’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system thanks to ShareFile’s StorageZones connectors (which work with Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive) and Software Developers Kit (SDK) that enables customers or partners to create a direct connection to most Enterprise Content Management suite.